Romans 5:12-19 offers a new perspective on the righteous purpose of God for humanity. Paul now wants to discuss by analogy the work of Adam and the work of Christ. We may also note that Paul will sometimes take up a new theme before he is quite through with the old one. The next section is more clearly related to justification and its consequences. Chapter 6-7 deal with the negative aspects of this new life, that is, freedom from sin and the law and implicitly death, and Chapter 8 speaks positively of possession of and by the Holy Spirit. This section explains the basis of life in Christ. Paul is ending his argument that he began in 1:18. Paul is less concerned with fixing blame on Adam than he is with setting the scene for humanity's universal need for Christ's redemptive act. Indeed, redemption is the true focus of Paul's discussion here - not sin and death. By holding up Adam with one hand and Christ with the other, Paul can demonstrate God's universal grace as a cure for sin's universal dominion over the world and the weakness of the universal experience of law to bring healing. Humanity as understood in Adam is in trouble with God and with each other. God has provided a new pattern for humanity in Christ. To understand this passage properly, we need to look upon Adam and Christ as the “secret” of humanity, the truth of which God has revealed in Christ. Thus, the Old Testament story of Adam reveals how today humanity is in so much trouble with God and each other. Each of us keep making the same boring and unimportant decision to depart from what we know to be true and good. Caught in this endless cycle repeated in the life of every human being, humanity is in a prison. Yet, in his life of obedience that led to the cross and in his resurrection from the dead, Christ reveals a truth concerning humanity that only his future beauty (glory) of his coming will fully reveal. Christ liberates us from the prison and opens us to the beauty of a future life in the Spirit, which will be the theme of the next chapters. This beautiful truth about humanity is present now for those with faith but awaits in hope its future declaration in the coming of Christ in glory.
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— In what sense can one say that everyone has sinned? Each of us sins as Adam did, and death has thus come upon all, while the participation of the many in the image of the eschatological man, Christ, is by participation in the transformation into his likeness.[1] We can more appropriately think of Adam as the first sinner. In him began the temptation by the power of sin that still seduces us all today. All of us sin because we think we can attain a full and true life thereby. In this sense, the story of Adam is the story of humanity. Every individual repeats it.[2] Thus, based upon the argument of Paul so far, as sin and death came into the world through Adam, death spread to all persons with the result that everyone has sinned. The point is that the sequel to the influence of Adam on humanity is the ratification of his sin in the sins of all individuals.[3] At this point, “sin” is an almost personified malevolent force, hostile to God and alienating people from each other and from God. 13 Sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Paul connects the fate of humanity with the death of Christ and with the Law, thereby linking a general anthropological relation between sin and death that makes the death of Jesus relevant to humanity in general, and not just those who lived within the historical particularity of the Israelite covenant. Paul has indicted humanity who has sinned like Adam since 1:18. Adam is the pattern of humanity as dominated by guilt, bondage, and death. The failure of Adam is the way Paul chose to characterize the human condition. The act of obedience by the Son did what Adam ought to have done but failed to do. Christ by his obedience is the pattern of the new humanity, in which are justification, redemption from sin, and victory over death. Sin defines humanity, for we know nothing of sinless humanity.[4] Sin is a special relationship of people to God, and it derives its power from this relationship. Sin is disturbing of the relationship with God that that we see defined strongly in death. Sin is robbery. Of course, sin was present before the Torah, but God does not “reckon” sin without a law, a notion that presupposes the Jewish conception of heavenly books in which God recorded human deeds. “Reckon” here means that humanity was not accountable until the Torah.[5] What Paul means here is that sin has its effects, but humanity is unaware of the connection without the law. People are not aware of sin as sin, even though they suffer its consequences. Sin still has terrible consequences, but people are not aware of the connection until the law arrives. Sin emerges from its anonymous existence with the law. 14 Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression (παραβάσεως) of Adam. The point is not the origin of death or sin. Death continues to dominate, not because of Adam, but because of the continued participation of humanity in sin. The point is the liability to sin and the liability to die as a punishment. All people share in Adam’s transgression. Adam began the common sinning of humanity. Adam by his transgression determined the character of the present age, so Christ has determined the character of the age to come. Sin is not part of the created order of God. We can see this in the way Paul uses the modest statement that sin “entered into” the world. It can be present and active within it only as an alien. It has no appointed place to belong. If it has its place, it is that of usurpation against the creative will of God, the place of an interloper. Sin is in a place in which it has no business because sin is that which God has not willed. It can only say No where God says Yes, and where in its own different fashion the creature of God can say Yes. Sin, on the other hand, can never say Yes to God. It offers only a negative. Death, the opposite of life, entered the world of human beings through sin. However, this does not mean only bodily death. It includes spiritual death, in the sense of separation from God. Adam led the way in humanity becomes servants of sin.[6] This discussion of sin and law has in the background the experience of Israel. They are the elect people of God confronted with the law or command of God. Its existence depends upon the covenant. Yet, Israel shows itself to be what all nations are, a rebellious and rejecting people when it comes to its relation to God. As Paul puts in verse 12, all people are sinners, but they are not notorious sinners until they know the law.[7] Adam is a type of the one who was to come. Paul treats Adam as the head of the old humanity, and what happened to the head has influenced the body of human beings.
What does Paul mean by sin here?[8] Paul does not explain how that negative effect of Adam takes place. Paul is aware that not all human sinfulness is owing to Adam alone; he makes this clear in v. 12, as he already indicted all human beings in 3:9, 23. Romans 5:12-14 have been the subject of a centuries-long theological debate, because Paul seems to affirm in this passage the existence of hereditary sin.
One of the problems Paul was dealing with was that of punishment before Moses. Indeed, we ended at asking the question, “Why, if they were not accountable, was death allowed as punishment.” The view of Sanday and Headlam magnify the problem. Indeed, one wonders why Paul would not use the same argument he used in 1:18-3:20. He has already shown that all people have enough knowledge for God to hold them accountable, and he thus uses the argument of natural law. This surely would have solved much of his difficulty here.
Sanday and Headlam have a discussion of Paul’s conception of sin that is revealing. Paul often personifies sin as well as death. Sin is more than either falling short of an ideal or an imperfection. It is a positive quality of a person, a personal offence against a personal God. Guilt is determined by consciousness, and everyone is conscious of the law, whether general in nature or specific in the Mosaic Law. Sin causes separation from God. People sin because of the wicked impulses of human nature, which was due to the corruption inherited from Adam. Is sin a personal or impersonal force? It would seem Paul would answer that sin is external to humanity and that there is a personal agency at work. What Paul has tried to show is that God’s plan of salvation began with the offering of Justification to the believer in v. 3:21-4:25. However, the Christian life does not end there, but has only begun. Justification opens the door to peace and joy and makes us part of a whole new order of humanity, for we are no longer of Adam, but of Christ, and thus, our bond is not with sin and death, but with righteousness and life. Indeed, Chapters 6-8 only make clearer what he has already said in this one chapter.
It is in v. 15-16 that Paul further develops the contrast between the results of Adam's sin and the results of Christ's obedience, even to the Cross. Thus, while v. 15-17 stand deep within the discussion of sin and death outlined in the text, they, too, point back to Paul's previous topic in chapters 1-4: the grace of God that leads to our justification. 15 However, the free gift is not like the trespass (παράπτωμα). For if the many [all] died through the one man’s trespass (παραπτώματι), much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many [all]. 16 And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin (ἁμαρτήσαντος). For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation (κατάκριμα), but the free gift (χάρισμα) following many trespasses (παραπτωμάτων) brings justification (δικαίωμα). Paul shows that Christ has achieved a balance on God's cosmic scale of justice. The sacrificial act of Christ on one side brings into balance the countless trespasses accumulated on Adam's side on the other side is through the power of God's grace. Paul will write in these verses in archetypical language of the eschatological destiny of humanity as if already fulfilled in Jesus Christ.[9] The grace of God and the gift have come to humanity in superabundance. The gift is God's benevolent favor, assuring justification and reconciliation to all who believe in Christ Jesus. Paul relates the Spirit as gift to believers becoming sons and daughters in baptism by fellowship with Jesus Christ.[10] The secret revealed in the dialectical relation of Adam and Christ is that people have fallen from God and yet find themselves bound to God. Both figures stand close upon the barrier between sin and righteousness, death and life. The one looks backward, but the other forward. From Adam to Christ, this is the road of God to humanity and among humanity.[11] 17 If, because of the one man’s trespass (παραπτώματι), death exercised dominion through that one. The loving turning of God to us, as well as how it relates to the gift of grace believers receive, is something that has not yet found full clarification in the history of theology. To re-emphasize what Paul has just said, the disobedience of Adam demonstrates the sinfulness of humanity, while the obedience of Christ makes many righteous. The formal effect of the sin of Adam is to show humanity as sinners. The power of sin came into the world first with Adam, but the choices of each generation carries sin forward.[12] Thus, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore just as one man’s trespass (παραπτώματος) led to condemnation (κατάκριμα) for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification (δικαίωσιν) and life for all. The reference to the obedience of the one man means that considering Easter, Jesus was obedient to his mission. That obedience led him into the extreme separation from God and to the dereliction of the cross. The remoteness from God on the cross was the climax of his self-distinction from the Father.[13] We need to raise the question of whether Paul has in mind the participation of all humanity in salvation, and thus of whether Paul thought of a reconciliation of all things.[14] 19 For just as by the one man’s disobedience (παρακοῆς) the many [all] were made sinners (ἁμαρτωλοὶ), so by the one man’s obedience the many [all] will be made righteous (δίκαιοι). The logic of the argument toward the destiny of human redemption for all persons and therefore all creation seems inescapable. If the disobedience of one man had such effect as the dominion of sin and death, the obedience of one man, Jesus Christ, had the greater effect of justification and life for humanity. The general idea is that just as Adam, the head and symbol of humanity, by his disobedience involved all people in guilt, bondage, and death, so Christ by his obedience qualifies as the head of a new humanity - a new creation - in which are justification, redemption from the power of sin, and victory over death. Paul has in mind the plan of God for history in this contrast of the first and second Adam.[15] The Adam of Genesis becomes the first Adam and opposed to him in Christ is the second Adam, the definitive form of human reality that has overcome sin and death. Christ becomes the New Adam, the second heavenly man, the prototype of reconciled humanity. He offers the new perspective on God’s righteous purpose for humanity. In its basic theme, that the excess of sin brings the fullness of grace to light, one could say that verses 12-21 provide a programmatic text for the letter. Paul raises his sight from believers as a group to embrace humanity. In these verses, we might well say that Paul presents the history of humanity as a drama in two parts, two epochs dominated by the two figures, Adam the tragic hero, and Christ the redeemer hero. The passage shows that sin breaks the unity of human reality. Because of it, the Adam of Genesis becomes the first Adam, and opposed to him in Jesus is the second Adam, the definitive form of human reality that has overcome sin and death. Paul emphasized the contrast between Christ and the man of sin so strongly that there was little place for the relation of the person and history of Jesus to the creative purpose of God. With his act of obedience, the one man Jesus Christ is the direct opposite of the Adam. He does not explore a relation between them. The gracious action of God toward those who lost under the dominion of sin forges the link. Yet, there is at least an implicit connection between Christ’s act of obedience in verse 19 and the sin of Adam. The act of obedience by the Son did what Adam ought to have done but failed to do. The act of obedience was his taking to himself the death of sinners in verses 6ff.[16]
If one is in Adam, one is an old, fallen, imprisoned, creature. If one is in Christ, one is a new, reconciled, and redeemed creature, as we learn in II Corinthians 5:17. One dies but enters life. However, these two worlds do not exist side by side, nor do the old and the new compose two people. For the possibility of the one involves the impossibility of the other. Only in the light of the critical Moment, when humanity and its world are passing as one whole, from the old to the new, from here to there, from the present to the coming age, does the distinction between the two become apparent. The two ways meet and go apart where in Adam people have fallen from God and where in Christ they find God again.[17] Adam sums up the history of humanity. Adam sums up the meaning or meaninglessness of this history. Human history is Adamic history. It begins in and with his history and its judgment is that it continuously corresponds to this history. With innumerable variations, it repeats the history of Adam. It re-enacts the scene in the garden. A golden age never existed, because the first human being is a sinner. Who is Adam? He simply did in the insignificant form of the beginner that which all people have done after him. He was in a trivial form what we all are, people of sin. No one must be Adam. We are so freely and on our own responsibility. God knows us in Adam. Adam is the truth concerning us as God knows it and tells us. Yet,[18] Paul shows that God has broken this Adamic history and given humanity another possibility simply by exposing humanity to the truth of itself.[19]
According to Bultmann, Paul is using in this paragraph a Gnostic myth about the original man. This is hardly an accurate description of Paul's teaching in this paragraph. If there is a myth behind the discussion, it is not the Gnostic myth, but that of Genesis 2-3. The unmistakably etiological character of that story insinuates that the sin of Adam was the cause of universal misery and sin. Paul is primarily interested in the contrast of the universality of sin and death with the universality of the life in Christ.
The Roman Catholic exegetical tradition has so interpreted this passage, especially 5:12, in terms of the universal causality of Adam's sin on the sinfulness of human individuals. Note the Tridentine decree, which gave a definitive interpretation to the Pauline text in the sense that his words teach a form of the dogma of Original Sin, a rare text that enjoys such an interpretation. Paul never explains how the connection between Adam and humanity works or how the sin of Adam transmits to the rest of humanity. When Augustine opposed Pelagius, who had been teaching that Adam influenced humanity by giving it a bad example, he introduced the idea of transmission by propagation or heredity. Theologians have queried whether Paul was teaching a form of monogenism because of his emphasis on Adam as "one man" and his historicization of Adam. Polygenism is thus a modern development of teaching about evolution. It goes far beyond Paul's perspective; hence, one should not use what Paul says here to solve such a problem.
[1] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 304.
[2] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 263.
[3] An interpretation that Joseph Fitzmyer in his commentary on Romans prefers.
[4] Barth, Romans, 168.
[5] John Knox in his commentary on Romans
[6] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [58.4], 139-40.
[7] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [61.3], 585-86.
[8] I rely upon Sanday & Headlam in their ICC commentary on Romans.
[9] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 197.
[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 9.
[11] Barth, Romans, 176.
[12] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume III, 197.
[13] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 375.
[14] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 76.
[15] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 196, 380.
[16] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume II, 295-296.
[17] Barth, Romans, 165.
[18] Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2 [15.2], 157.
[19] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [60.3], 507-8, 512-13.
liked this. I guess this goes to our discussion on sin for pagans and our discussion on sin as a fall. No law no sin would leave it up to the pagan to respond to what God shows him. Much like Abraham did.Like the discussion on what sin is
ReplyDeleteYes I am intrigued by how little the OT stresses the disobedience of Adam. I find myself wrestling with a different way of viewing Genesis 3. The NT is clear that Jesus fulfilled what God wanted, in contrast to Adam here, to Israel in the wilderness in the temptation narrative, and that he faithfully lived the Shema of Israel. I have not pieced all this together, but I do think we need to re-think the notion of Fall.
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